Jeremy Jie Bird Casey, who once loaded missiles on U.S. Air Force fighter jets, on Sunday stepped across the stage at the Metropolitan State College of Denver commencement toward his dream of becoming a doctor.

The 36-year-old Air Force veteran earned a degree in integrated therapeutic practices, joining a class of 1,625 Metro State graduates — the school’s largest spring graduating class.

The class, school officials said, was also the most diverse — 60 percent of the graduates were women, and nearly a quarter of the class were students of color.

The spring 2011 class did include plenty of traditional college graduates, such as 22-year-old computer-science graduate Timothy Messing.

Messing said he will go to work for investment firm Charles Schwab. “I’m excited for a bright future,” Messing said.

Many others, like Casey, took a more meandering path toward graduation at Metro State.

“It’s absolutely the kind of program that matches my beliefs,” Casey said in a news release from Metro.

Casey served in Germany and Italy from 1992 until 1995, and finally left reserve service in 2000. He spent some time as a banker before deciding about five years ago to follow a new path, which led also to China and Peru.

“I found the financial industry was not good for my soul,” he said.

Casey, who will begin his studies in osteopathic medicine at Rocky Vista University in Parker this fall, said he believes in a more holistic style of medicine.

“I shy away from the Western biomedical theory that we can treat every sickness with a Band-Aid approach,” Casey said in the news release.

It was while volunteering at a special- needs kindergarten during a visit to China in 2009 that Casey earned the nickname “Jie” from the school’s headmistress. Casey took it as a legal middle name. It means “hero.”

Sunday’s 40-degree weather made the outdoor ceremony uncomfortable for some, so the school broke tradition and allowed students to leave after crossing the stage, freeing them to head off toward the next phase of their journeys.

Human-services major Sara Smith, 39, said she planned to earn a master’s degree in violence counseling.

Smith said she ran away from home in the eighth grade and hit rock bottom after seven drug-related felony charges. She is now drug-free and a motivational speaker, as well as a volunteer at family- counseling centers around Denver.

Dressed in her blue and red commencement regalia and clutching her diploma, Smith said her achievement once seemed impossible.

“I never thought I would live this long, let alone graduate,” Smith said.

Casey, who is set to marry this summer, said graduation was another beginning.

The owners of Boulder’s Sterling University Peaks apartments, who this summer were cited for illegally subdividing 92 bedrooms in the complex, have reached an agreement to settle the case for $410,000, the city announced Thursday.